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CHAPTER II
SIGHT UNSEEN

In the squabble and snatch of argument, given dignity only because it concerned the recovery of near a million dollars, we seemed to have lost Worth Gilbert entirely. He kept his seat, that chair he had taken instantly when old Dykeman seemed to wish to have it denied him; but he sat on it as though it were a lone rock by the sea. I didn't suppose he was hearing what we said any more than he would have heard the mewing of a lot of gulls, when, on a sudden silence, he burst out,

"For heaven's sake, if you men can't decide on anything, sell me the suitcase! I'll buy it, as it is, and clean up the job."

"Sell you – the suitcase – Clayte's suitcase?" They sat up on the edge of their chairs; bewildered, incredulous, hostile. Such a bunch is very like a herd of cattle; anything they don't understand scares them. Even the attorney studied young Gilbert with curious interest. I was mortal glad I hadn't said what was the fact, that with the naming of the enormous sum lost I was certain this was a sizable conspiracy with long-laid plans. They were mistrustful enough as Whipple finally questioned,

"Is this a bona-fide offer, Captain Gilbert?" and Dykeman came in after him.

"A gambler's chance at stolen money – is that what you figure on buying, sir? Is that it?" And heavy-faced Anson asked bluntly,

"Who's to set the price on it? You or us? There's practically a million dollars in that suitcase. It belongs to the bank. If you've got an idea that you can buy up the chance of it for about fifty percent – you're mistaken. We have too much faith in Mr. Boyne and his agency for that. Why, at this moment, one of his men may have laid hands on Clayte, or found the man who planned – "

He stopped with his mouth open. I saw the same suspicion that had taken his breath away grip momentarily every man at the table. A hint of it was in Whipple's voice as he asked, gravely:

"Do you bind yourself to pursue Clayte and bring him, if possible, to justice?"

"Bind myself to nothing. I'll give eight hundred thousand dollars for that suitcase."

He fumbled in his pocket with an interrogative look at Whipple, and, "May I smoke in here?" and lit a cigarette without waiting a reply.

Banking institutions take some pains to keep in their employ no young men who are known to play poker; but a poker face at that board would have acquired more than its share of dignity. As it was, you could see, almost as though written there, the agonizing doubt running riot in their faces as to whether Worth Gilbert was a young hero coming to the bank's rescue, or a con man playing them for suckers. It was Knapp who said at last, huskily,

"I think we should close with Captain Gilbert's offer." The cashier had a considerable family, and I knew his recently bought Pacific Avenue home was not all paid for.

"We might consider it," Whipple glanced doubtfully at his associates. "If everything else fails, this might be a way out of the difficulty for us."

If everything else failed! President Whipple was certainly no poker player. Worth Gilbert gave one swift look about the ring of faces, pushed a brown, muscular left hand out on the table top, glancing at the wrist watch there, and suggested brusquely,

"Think it over. My offer holds for fifteen minutes. Time to get at all the angles of the case. Huh! Gentlemen! I seem to have started something!"

For the directors and stockholders of the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank were at that moment almost as yappy and snappy as a wolf pack. Dykeman wanted to know about the one hundred and eighty seven thousand odd dollars not covered by Worth's offer – did they lose that? Knapp was urging that Clayte's bond, when they'd collected, would shade the loss; Whipple reminding them that they'd have to spend a good deal – maybe a great deal – on the recovery of the suitcase; money that Worth Gilbert would have to spend instead if they sold to him; and finally an ugly mutter from somewhere that maybe young Gilbert wouldn't have to spend so very much to recover that suitcase – maybe he wouldn't!

The tall young fellow looked thoughtfully at his watch now and again. Cummings and I chipped into the thickest of the row and convinced them that he meant what he said, not only by his offer, but by its time limit.

"How about publicity, if this goes?" Whipple suddenly interrogated, raising his voice to top the pack-yell. "Even with eight hundred thousand dollars in our vaults, a run's not a thing that does a bank any good. I suppose," stretching up his head to see across his noisy associates, "I suppose, Captain Gilbert, you'll be retaining Boyne's agency? In that case, do you give him the publicity he wants?"

"Course he does!" Dykeman hissed. "Can't you see? Damn fool wants his name in the papers! Rotten story like this – about some lunatic buying a suitcase with a million in it – would ruin any bank if it got into print." Dykeman's breath gave out. "And – it's – it's – just the kind of story the accursed yellow press would eat up. Let it alone, Whipple. Let his damned offer alone. There's a joker in it somewhere."

"There won't be any offer in about three minutes," Cummings quietly reminded them. "If you'd asked my opinion – and giving you opinions is what you pay me a salary for – I'd have said close with him while you can."

Whipple gave me an agonized glance. I nodded affirmatively. He put the question to vote in a breath; the ayes had it, old Dykeman shouting after them in an angry squeak.

"No! No!" and adding as he glared about him, "I'd like to be able to look a newspaper in the face; but never again! Never again!"

I made my way over to Gilbert and stood in front of him.

"You've bought something, boy," I said. "If you mean to keep me on as your detective, you can assure these people that I'll do my darndest to give information to the police and keep it out of the papers. What's happened here won't get any further than this room – through me."

"You're hired, Jerry Boyne." Gilbert slapped me on the back affectionately. After all, he hadn't changed so much in his four years over there; I began to see more than traces of the enthusiastic youngster to whom I used to spin detective yarns in the grill at the St. Francis or on the rocks by the Cliff House. "Sure, we'll keep it out of the papers. Suits me. I'd rather not pose as the fool soon parted from his money."

The remark was apropos; Knapp had feverishly beckoned the lawyer over to a little side desk; they were down at it, the light snapped on, writing, trying to frame up an agreement that would hold water. One by one the others went and looked on nervously as they worked; by the time they'd finished something, everybody'd seen it but Worth; and when it was finally put in his hands, all he seemed to notice was the one point of the time they'd set for payment.

"It'll be quite some stunt to get the amount together by ten o'clock Monday," he said slowly. "There are securities to be converted – "

He paused, and looked up on a queer hush.

"Securities?" croaked Dykeman. "To be converted – ? Oh!"

"Yes," in some surprise. "Or would the bank prefer to have them turned over in their present form?"

Again a strained moment, broken by Whipple's nervous,

"Maybe that would be better," and a quickly suppressed chuckle from Cummings.

The agreement was in duplicate. It gave Worth Gilbert complete ownership of a described sole-leather suitcase and its listed contents, and, as he had demanded, it bound him to nothing save the payment. Cummings said frankly that the transaction was illegal from end to end, and that any assurance as to the bank's ceasing to pursue Clayte would amount to compounding a felony. Yet we all signed solemnly, the lawyer and I as witnesses. A financier's idea of indecency is something about money which hasn't formerly been done. The directors got sorer and sorer as Worth Gilbert's cheerfulness increased.

"Acts as though it were a damn' crap game," I heard Dykeman muttering to Sillsbee, who came back vacuously.

"Craps? – they say our boys did shoot craps a good deal over there. Well – uh – they were risking their lives."

And that's as near as any of them came, I suppose, to understanding how a weariness of the little interweaving plans of tamed men had pushed Worth Gilbert into carelessly staking his birthright on a chance that might lend interest to life, a hazard big enough to breeze the staleness out of things for him.

We were leaving the bank, Gilbert and I ahead, Cummings right at my boy's shoulder, the others holding back to speak together, (bitterly enough, if I am any guesser) when Worth said suddenly,

"You mentioned in there it's being illegal for the bank to give up the pursuit of Clayte. Seems funny to me, but I suppose you know what you're talking about. Anyhow" – he was lighting another cigarette and he glanced sharply at Cummings across it – "anyhow, they won't waste their money hunting Clayte now, should you say? That's my job. That's where I get my cash back."

"Oh, that's where, is it?" The lawyer's dry tone might have been regarded as humorous. We stood in the deep doorway, hunching coat collars, looking into the foggy street. Worth's interest in life seemed to be freshening moment by moment.

"Yes," he agreed briskly. "I'm going to keep you and Boyne busy for a while. You'll have to show me how to hustle the payment for those Shylocks, and Jerry's got to find the suitcase, so I can eat. But I'll help him."

Cummings stared at the boy.

"Gilbert," he said, "where are you going? – right now, I mean."

"To Boyne's office."

We stepped out to the street where the line of limousines waited for the old fellows inside, my own battleship-gray roadster, pretty well hammered but still a mighty capable machine, far down at the end. As Worth moved with me toward it, the lawyer walked at his elbow.

"Seat for me?" he glanced at the car. "I've a few words of one syllable to say to this young man – council that I ought to get in as early as possible."

I looked at little Pete dozing behind the wheel, and answered,

"Take you all right, if I could drive. But I sprained my thumb on a window lock looking over that room at the St. Dunstan."

"I'll drive." Worth had circled the car with surprising quickness for so large a man. I saw him on the other side, waiting for Pete to get out so he could get in. Curious the intimate, understanding look he gave the monkey as he flipped a coin at him with, "Buy something to burn, kid." Pete's idea of Worth Gilbert would be quite different from that of the directors in there. After all, human beings are only what we see them from our varying angles. Pete slid down, looking back to the last at the tall young fellow who was taking his place at the wheel. Cummings and I got in and we were off.

There in the machine, my new boss driving, Cummings sitting next him, I at the further side, began the keen, cool probe after a truth which to me lay very evidently on the surface. Any one, I would have said, might see with half an eye that Worth Gilbert had bought Clayte's suitcase so that he could get a thrill out of hunting for it. Cummings I knew had in charge all the boy's Pacific Coast holdings; and since his mother's death during the first year of the war, these were large. Worth manifested toward them and the man who spoke to him of them the indifference, almost contempt, of an impatient young soul who in the years just behind him, had often wagered his chance of his morning's coffee against some other fellow's month's pay feeling that he was putting up double.

It seemed the sense of ownership was dulled in one who had seen magnificent properties masterless, or apparently belonging to some limp, bloodstained bundle of flesh that lay in one of the rooms. In vain Cummings urged the state of the market, repeating with more particularity and force what Whipple had said. The mines were tied up by strike; their stock, while perfectly good, was down to twenty cents on the dollar; to sell now would be madness. Worth only repeated doggedly.

"I've got to have the money – Monday morning – ten o'clock. I don't care what you sell – or hock. Get it."

"See here," the lawyer was puzzled, and therefore unprofessionally out of temper. "Even sacrificing your stuff in the most outrageous manner, I couldn't realize enough – not by ten o'clock Monday. You'll have to go to your father. You can catch the five-five for Santa Ysobel."

I could see Worth choke back a hot-tempered refusal of the suggestion. The funds he'd got to have, even if he went through some humiliation to get them.

"At that," he said slowly, "father wouldn't have any great amount of cash on hand. Say I went to him with the story – and took the cat-hauling he'll give me – should I be much better off?"

"Sure you would." Cummings leaned back. I saw he considered his point made. "Whipple would rather take their own bank stock than anything else. Your father has just acquired a big block of it. Act while there's time. Better go out there and see him now – at once."

"I'll think about it," Worth nodded. "You dig for me what you can and never quit." And he applied himself to the demands of the down-town traffic.

"Well," Cummings said, "drop me at the next corner, please. I've got an engagement with a man here."

Worth swung in and stopped. Cummings left us. As we began to worm a slow way toward my office, I suggested,

"You'll come upstairs with me, and – er – sort of outline a policy? I ought to have any possible information you can give me, so's not to make any more wrong moves than we have to."

"Information?" he echoed, and I hastened to amend,

"I mean whatever notion you've got. Your theory, you know – "

"Not a notion. Not a theory." He shook his head, eyes on the traffic cop. "That's your part."

I sat there somewhat flabbergasted. After all, I hadn't fully believed that the boy had absolutely nothing to go on, that he had bought purely at a whim, put up eight hundred thousand dollars on my skill at running down a criminal. It sort of crumpled me up. I said so. He laughed a little, ran up to the curb at the Phelan building, cut out the engine, set the brake and turned to me with,

"Don't worry. I'm getting what I paid for – or what I'm going to pay for. And I've got to go right after the money. Suppose I meet you, say, at ten o'clock to-night?"

"Suits me."

"At Tait's. Reserve a table, will you, and we'll have supper."

"You're on," I said. "And plenty to do myself meantime." I hopped out on my side.

Worth sat in the roadster, not hurrying himself to follow up Cummings' suggestion – the big boy, non-communicative, incurious, the question of fortune lost or won seeming not to trouble him at all. I skirted the machine and came round to him, demanding,

"With whom do you suppose Cummings' engagement was?"

"Don't know, Jerry, and don't care," looking down at me serenely. "Why should I?" He swung one long leg free and stopped idly, half in the car, half out.

"What if I told you Cummings' engagement was with our friend Dykeman – only Dykeman doesn't know it yet?"

Slowly he brought that dangling foot down to the pavement, followed it with the other, and faced me. Across the blankness of his features shot a joyous gleam; it spread, brightening till he was radiant.

"I get you!" he chortled. "Collusion! They think I'm standing in with Clayte – Oh, boy!"

He threw back his head and roared.

CHAPTER III
A WEDDING PARTY

I looked at my watch; quarter of ten; a little ahead of my appointment. I ordered a telephone extension brought to this corner table I had reserved at Tait's and got in touch with my office; then with the knowledge that any new kink in the case would be reported immediately to me, I relaxed to watch the early supper crowd arrive: Women in picture hats and bare or half-bare shoulders with rich wraps slipping off them; hum of voices; the clatter of silver and china; waiters beginning to wake up and dart about settling new arrivals. And I wondered idly what sort of party would come to sit around one long table across from me specially decorated with pale tinted flowers.

There was a sense of warmth and comfort at my heart. I am a lonely man; the people I take to seem to have a way of passing on in the stream of life – or death – leaving me with a few well-thumbed volumes on a shelf in my rooms for consolation. Walt Whitman, Montaigne, The Bard, two or three other lesser poets, and you've the friends that have stayed by me for thirty years. And so, having met up with Worth Gilbert when he was a youngster, at the time his mother was living in San Francisco to get a residence for her divorce proceedings, having loved the boy and got I am sure some measure of affection in return, it seemed almost too much to ask of fate that he should come back into my days, plunge into such a proposition as this bank robbery, right at my elbow as it were, and make himself my employer – my boss.

I was a subordinate in the agency in those old times when he and I used to chin about the business, and his idea (I always discussed it gravely and respectfully with him) was to grow up and go into partnership with me. Well, we were partners now.

Past ten, nearly five minutes. Where was he? What up to? Would he miss his appointment? No, I caught a glimpse of him at the door getting rid of hat and overcoat, pausing a moment with tall bent head to banter Rose, the little Chinese girl who usually drifted from table to table with cigars and cigarettes. Then he was coming down the room.

A man who takes his own path in life, and will walk it though hell bar the way, never explaining, never extenuating, never excusing his course – something seems to emanate from such a chap that draws all eyes after him in a public place in a look between fear and desire. Sitting there in Tait's, my view of Worth cut off now by a waiter with a high-carried tray, again by people passing to tables for whom he halted, I had a good chance to see the turning of eyeballs that followed him, the furtive glances that snatched at him, or fondled him, or would have probed him; the admiration of the women, the envy of the men, curiously alike in that it was sometimes veiled and half wistful, sometimes very open. Drifters – you see so many of the sort in a restaurant – why wouldn't they hanker after the strength and ruthlessness of a man like Worth? And the poor prunes, how little they knew him! As my friend Walt would say, he wasn't out after any of the old, smooth prizes they cared for. And win or lose he would still be a victor, for all he and his sort demand is freedom, and the joy of the game. So he came on to me.

I noticed, a little startled, as he slumped into his chair with a grunt of greeting, that his cheek was somehow gaunt and pale under the tan; the blue fire of his eyes only smoldered, and I pulled back his chair with,

"You look as if you hadn't had any dinner."

"I haven't." He gave a man-size order for food and turned back from it to listen to me. "I'll be nearer human when I get some grub under my belt."

My report of what had been done on the case since we separated was interrupted by the arrival of our orders, and Worth sailed into a thick, juicy steak while I was still explaining details. The orchestra whanged and blared and jazzed away; the people at the other tables noticed us or busied themselves noisily with affairs of their own; Worth sat and enjoyed his meal with the air of a man feeding at a solitary country tavern. When he had finished – and he took his time about it – the worn, punished look was gone from his face; his eye was bright, his tone nonchalant, as he lighted a cigarette, remarking,

"I've had one more good dinner. Food's a thing you can depend on; it doesn't rake up your entire past record from the time you squirmed into this world, and tell you what a fool you've always been."

I turned that over in my mind. Did it mean that he'd seen his father and got a calling down? I wanted to know – and was afraid to ask. The fact is I was beginning to wake up to a good many things about my young boss. I was intensely interested in his reactions on people. So far, I'd seen him with strangers. I wished that I might have a chance to observe him among intimates. Old Richardson who founded our agency (and would never knowingly have left me at the head of it, though he did take me in as partner, finally) used to say that the main trouble with me was I studied people instead of cases. Richardson held that all men are equal before the detective, and must be regarded only as queer shaped pieces to be fitted together so as to make out a case. Richardson would have gone as coolly about easing the salt of the earth into the chink labeled "murder" or "embezzlement," as though neither had been human. With me the personal equation always looms big, and of course he was quite right in saying that it's likely to get you all gummed up.

The telephone on the table before me rang. It was Roberts, my secretary, with the word that Foster had lifted the watch from Ocean View, the little town at the neck of the peninsula, where bay and ocean narrow the passageway to one thoroughfare, over which every machine must pass that goes by land from San Francisco. With two operatives, he had been on guard there since three o'clock of the afternoon, holding up blond men in cars, asking questions, taking notes and numbers. Now he reported it was a useless waste of time.

"Order him in," I instructed Roberts.

A far-too-fat entertainer out on the floor was writhing in the pangs of an Hawaiian dance. It took the attention of the crowd. I watched the face of my companion for a moment, then,

"Worth," I said a bit nervously – after all, I nearly had to know – "is your father going to come through?"

"Eh?" He looked at me startled, then put it aside negligently. "Oh, the money? No. I'll leave that up to Cummings." A brief pause. "We'll get a wiggle on us and dig up the suitcase." He lifted his tumbler, stared at it, then unseeingly out across the room, and his lip twitched in a half smile. "I'm sure glad I bought it."

Looking at him, I had no reason to doubt his word. His enjoyment of the situation seemed to grow with every detail I brought up.

It was near eleven when the party came in to take the long, flower-trimmed table. Worth's back was to the room; I saw them over his shoulder, in the lead a tall blonde, very smartly dressed, but not in evening clothes; in severe, exclusive street wear. The man with her, good looking, almost her own type, had that possessive air which seems somehow unmistakable – and there was a look about the half dozen companions after them, as they settled themselves in a great flurry of scraping chairs, that made me murmur with a grin,

"Bet that's a wedding party."

Worth gave them one quick glance, then came round to me with a smile.

"You win. Married at Santa Ysobel this afternoon. Local society event. Whole place standing on its hind legs, taking notice."

So he had been down to the little town to see his father after all. And he wasn't going to talk about it. Oh, well.

"Friends of yours?" I asked perfunctorily, and he gave me a queer look out of the corners of those wicked eyes, repeating in an enjoying drawl.

"Friends? Oh, hardly that. The girl I was to have married, and Bronson Vandeman – the man she has married."

I had wanted to get a more intimate line on the kid – it seemed that here was a chance with a vengeance!

"The rest of the bunch?" I suggested. He took a leisurely survey, and gave them three words:

"Family and accomplices."

"Santa Ysobel people, too, then. Folks you know well?"

"Used to."

"The lady changed her mind while you were across?" I risked the query.

"While I was shedding my blood for my country." He nodded. "Gave me the butt while the Huns were using the bayonet on me."

In the careless jeer, as much at himself as at her, no hint what his present feeling might be toward the fashion plate young female across there. With some fellows, in such a situation, I should have looked for a disposition to duck the encounter; let his old sweetheart's wedding party leave without seeing him; with others I should have discounted a dramatic moment when he would court the meeting. It was impossible to suppose either thing of Worth Gilbert; plain that he simply sat there because he sat there, and would make no move toward the other table unless something in that direction interested him – pleasantly or unpleasantly – which at present nothing seemed to do.

So we smoked, Worth indifferent, I giving all the attention to the people over there: bride and groom; a couple of fair haired girls so like the bride that I guessed them to be sisters; a freckled, impudent looking little flapper I wasn't so sure of; two older men, and an older woman. Then a shifting of figures gave me sight of a face that I hadn't seen before, and I drew in my breath with a whistle.

"Whew! Who's the dark girl? She's a beauty!"

"Dark girl?" Worth had interest enough to lean into the place where I got my view; after he did so he remained to stare. I sat and grinned while he muttered,

"Can't be… I believe it is!"

Something to make him sit up and take notice now. I didn't wonder at his fixed study of the young creature. Not so dressed up as the others – I think she wore what ladies call an evening blouse with a street suit; a brunette, but of a tinting so delicate that she fairly sparkled, she took the shine off those blonde girls. Her small beautifully formed, uncovered head had the living jet of the crow's wing; her great eyes, long-lashed and sumptuously set, showed ebon irises almost obliterating the white. Dark, shining, she was a night with stars, that girl.

"Funny thing," Worth spoke, moving his head to keep in line with that face. "How could she grow up to be like this – a child that wasn't allowed any childhood? Lord, she never even had a doll!"

"Some doll herself now," I smiled.

"Yeh," he assented absently, "she's good looking – but where did she learn to dress like that – and play the game?"

"Where they all learn it." I enjoyed very much seeing him interested. "From her mother, and her sisters, or the other girls."

"Not." He was positive. "Her mother died when she was a baby. Her father wouldn't let her be with other children – treated her like one of the instruments in his laboratory; trained her in her high chair; problems in concentration dumped down into its tray, punishment if she made a failure; God knows what kind of a reward if she succeeded; maybe no more than her bowl of bread and milk. That's the kind of a deal she got when she was a kid. And will you look at her now!"

If he kept up his open staring at the girl, it would be only a matter of time when the wedding party discovered him. I leaned back in my chair to watch, while Worth, full of his subject, spilled over in words.

"Never played with anybody in her life – but me," he said unexpectedly. "They lived next house but one to us; the professor had the rest of the Santa Ysobel youngsters terrorized, backed off the boards; but I wasn't a steady resident of the burg. I came and went, and when I came, it was playtime for the little girl."

"What was her father? Crank on education?"

"Psychology," Worth said briefly. "International reputation. But he ought to have been hung for the way he brought Bobs up. Listen to this, Jerry. I got off the train one time at Santa Ysobel – can't remember just when, but the kid over there was all shanks and eyes – 'bout ten or eleven, I'd say. Her father had her down at the station doing a stunt for a bunch of professors. That was his notion of a nice, normal development for a small child. There she sat poked up cross-legged on a baggage truck. He'd trained her to sit in that self balanced position so she could make her mind blank without going to sleep. A freight train was hitting a twenty mile clip past the station, and she was adding the numbers on the sides of the box cars, in her mind. It kept those professors on the jump to get the figures down in their notebooks, but she told them the total as the caboose was passing."

"Some stunt," I agreed. "Freight car numbers run up into the ten-thousands." Worth didn't hear me, he was still deep in the past.

"Poor little white-faced kid," he muttered. "I dumped my valises, horned into that bunch, picked her off the truck and carried her away on my shoulder, while the professor yelled at me, and the other ginks were tabbing up their additions. And I damned every one of them, to hell and through it."

"You must have been a popular youth in your home town," I suggested.

"I was," he grinned. "My reason for telling you that story, though, is that I've got an idea about the girl over there – if she hasn't changed too much. I think maybe we might – "

He stood up calmly to study her, and his tall figure instantly drew the attention of everybody in the room. Over at the long table it was the sharp, roving eye of the snub-nosed flapper that spied him first. I saw her give the alarm and begin pushing back her chair to bolt right across and nab him. The sister sitting next stopped her. Judging from the glimpses I had as the party spoke together and leaned to look, it was quite a sensation. But apparently by common consent they left whatever move was to be made to the bride; and to my surprise this move was most unconventional. She got up with an abrupt gesture and started over to our table – alone. This, for a girl of her sort, was going some. I glanced doubtfully at Worth. He shrugged a little.

"Might as well have it over. Her family lives on one side of us, and Brons Vandeman on the other."

And then the bride was with us. She didn't overdo the thing – much; only held out her hand with a slightly pleading air as though half afraid it would be refused. And it was a curious thing to see that pretty, delicate featured, schooled face of hers naïvely drawn in lines of emotion – like a bisque doll registering grief.

Gilbert took the hand, shook it, and looked around with the evident intention of presenting me. I saw by the way the lady gave me her shoulder, pushing in, speaking low, that she didn't want anything of the sort, and quietly dropped back. I barely got a side view of Worth's face, but plainly his calmness was a disappointment to her.